A panel commissioned by President Barack Obama to review the federal government response to the Gulf oil spill of 2010, considered the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, came back with a pretty harsh indictment.

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling found that the government "created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem."


The commission's report, published in October 2010, portrayed the government as bumbling in its efforts to accurately estimate the rate of oil flow from BP's Macondo well.

How Much Oil Was Really Leaking?

The federal government clearly couldn't get a handle on how much oil was spilling from the well, according to the report.

Consider:

- On April 22, 2010, two days after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the government estimated the leak to be of about 8,000 barrels per day.

- On April 23, Rear Admiral Mary Landry, the ranking federal official on the spill response team at the time, told CBS News that "at this time there is no crude emanating from that wellhead at the ocean floor . . . . there is not oil emanating from the riser either."

- On April 24, Coast Guard and BP officials upped their estimate to 1,000 barrels of oil a day.

- On April 28, based on information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Landry announced the magnitude of the leak was much greater, about 5,000 barrels of oil a day.

Meantime, scientists were estimated the leak to be much larger, potentially between 25,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil a day.

It turns out, those scientists were more accurate than the government.

"It is possible that the early official flow estimates would have been more accurate if the government had either enlisted greater in- house scientific expertise, or enlisted outside scientific expertise by making available the data on which government estimates were based," the commission stated.

"The government appears to have taken an overly casual approach to the calculation and release of the 5,000 bbls/day estimate ..."

Undermining Public Confidence

"For responders, politicians, and the public, the leaking well's 'flow rate' quickly became a crucial and controversial question," the commission stated. "Throughout the first month of the spill, government responders officially adhered to what we now know were low and inaccurate estimates."

The commission found that the government estimates "were the source of significant controversy, which undermined public confidence in the federal government's response to the spill."

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the commission stated.

Why It Matters

The loss of public trust is during a disaster is not, as the commission put it, "an incidental public relations problem."

It's much more serious than that.

"The absence of trust fuels public fears, and those fears in turn can cause major harm, whether because the public loses confidence in the federal government's assurances that beaches or seafood are safe, or because the government's lack of credibility makes it harder to build relationships with state and local officials, as well as community leaders, that are necessary for effective response actions," the commission concluded.